What happens when you put a dozen or so veteran game designers in a cabin in Vancouver for a few days? They take walks and eat breakfast together, and then they form Hinterland Games and start development on their first project, a survival sim called "The Long Dark."

IndieCade -- a juried festival and awards show of indie games that takes over Culver City every October -- has released its list of this year's 36 finalists, as well as a list of 12 specially-featured "Digital Selects."

At its most basic, "Super Hot" is a first-shooter by Blue Brick Studios. It was made in a week, as part of the 7DFPS game jam, and is available right here, free to play in your browser. It should only take about five or ten minutes, so give it a whirl.

inXile, the developer behind the crowd-funded sequel, "Wasteland 2," certainly aren't shy about showing their work on the post-apocalyptic RPG. Back in February, the studio released approximately 20 minutes of gameplay footage from the first level of "Wasteland 2" and today, they're going a little deeper into the campaign with a look at the Prison.

I haven't so much as loaded the title screen for Might & Delight's "Shelter," but I'm heartsick just thinking about those poor baby badgers and their inevitable (but hopefully quick and painless) death in some hawk's talons or white-capped riverbed. I'm not confident at all that I have the emotional fortitude to see "Shelter" through to the end.

So, this is great: "Octopus City Blues" is the first game from Kuwait City-based Ghost in a Bottle Corporation. It's an adventure game about a listless, middle-aged octoblood junkie, tentacle cutter, and all-around chump named Kaf Kafkaryan and his unwitting role in changing Octopus City forever.